Archie winced. “That sounds less fun than chasing a rattler through a cactus field.”
“I know.”
“My quarter’s worth of free advice? Keep him on your list and keep digging,” Archie said. “If you get anything else that pulls him in, it’s worth going after, even with a hotshot lawyer in the mix.”
“I got his plate number. I’ll see if that turns anything up.” I gestured to the folders. “I didn’t come here to talk about Tenley, though.”
I plucked a tangle of noodles from the carton and bit into it, barely noticing the tang as I chewed, my eyes on the photo of Jessa clipped to the front of the APD jacket. I reached for it, memorizing every contour of a pretty, earnest face that didn’t need much makeup.
“How did you end up at the caverns?” I asked, my gaze locked on Jessa’s wide blue eyes.
“I’m guessing not for a study date. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.” Archie slammed his carton onto the table, sloshing sauce over one edge.
I watched the brown droplet slide toward the shiny tabletop. “Did they get anything useful from her phone? Texts about plans, social media posts?”
He flipped open a thicker file folder, already shaking his head. “Nobody ever found her cell phone.”
Damn. Strike one. I chewed a bite of spring roll.
“APD ran a standard missing person’s.” He fanned a stack of papers and photos across the table between us. “Her debit card was swiped at a gas station on Sixth not long after she left the dorm, and then at a pizza place in Tarrytown an hour later. ATM camera across the street from the pizza joint puts her entering a bar next door just before eleven.”
“When did she leave?” I tapped one finger on the table, pushing my food away.
“That’s the first place it gets sticky.” Archie sighed. “She didn’t, that we can see.”
Um. “What? Is there a back door?”
“There is, but there’s no camera back there. Add to that, there was a storm after midnight that night—the last storm we saw, if I’m not mistaken. A transformer two blocks over took a lightning bolt, and the power surge fried the circuit the ATM camera was on. So there’s no footage from 12:38 until noon the next day.”
Double damn. I shot to my feet and paced the length of the floor. “Witnesses?”
“Bartender pointed us to a handful of regulars. The place has a mostly older crowd, not really a typical hangout for kids that age. One woman remembered seeing her, but didn’t notice when she left or with who.”
I folded my hands behind my back, fingers wrapping the bracelet again. So far, its mojo wasn’t helping tonight.
“Who’d she go in with?” I stopped, picking up a series of four grainy stills that showed Jessa, dressed in a short dark skirt and a floaty transparent top, approaching and entering the bar.
“It’s hard to tell if she was actually with anyone,” Archie said as I flipped from the first image to the second. He was right. Between the crowded sidewalk and the southern propensity of any given person to open the door for another, the photos couldn’t tell us who was in a group and who was a polite stranger.
I shook my head, dropping them back to the table. “This really is kind of impossible. So far.”
Archie shoveled another forkful of beef into his mouth and nodded, chewing. “And yet we can’t say that,” he said around the food.
“Sure we can. We just can’t believe it.” The words hung in the air around us, seeping into the wood-paneled walls, the weight of what I didn’t add out loud pressing in, heavy and constricting, as I surveyed the table. It was all there, every variable in a long, complicated equation that only had one right answer. Photos. Hours of detective legwork and interviews. And the whole thing stopped right here. Archie’s desk was the last exit on the cold-case expressway. Jessa would end up in victim purgatory if we didn’t manage to dig out what everyone else had missed. I hadn’t ever met this young woman’s parents, but I would pour everything I had into saving them from getting that phone call. The Rangers run Texas’s cold-case unit, but with nine investigators and about three thousand cases, successes are few and country miles between.
I shut my eyes. Focused on my breath. In for a five count, out for seven. The answer is always somewhere. I’d spent more than half my life believing that with the fire of ten thousand suns. It got me through the rougher days.
Thirty feet or so below my boots, a file cabinet held the known facts of what happened to my big sister. And someday, I’d be down there leading a team that would finally put an end to my wondering. My fears. My nightmares.
Someday.
But today, Jessa needed my help. And so did Tenley. Clapping my hands together, I resumed pacing. “Fast-forward to the hikers.”
Archie grabbed a third folder, the fattest on the table. “February twenty-fourth, 9:48 a.m., Parks and Wildlife responds to a call from two hikers, both male, who spotted, quote, ‘what looked like somebody’s head’ near the mouth of Whirlpool Cave. Hiked back out to the road to get a phone signal and called 911.”
I knew most of the rest of the story already—everyone did. Jessa’s remains had been burned; her dental records needed to identify her. Archie went on TV asking the public for help. Her folks put up fifty grand for any information that led to the arrest of her killer. Crazies came out from under their rocks and clamored for attention or money or both.
The investigation went nowhere.
Which brought everything back to this room. A last shot at justice for this pretty coed.
“I’m tired of young women disappearing and nobody ever having to answer for it.” Archie blew out a long breath, reaching for the middle folder, holding the snapshot of Jessa in both hands. “I’ve been in this game a long damned time, kiddo. We fail these women. Maybe not us personally, but our system. Every single day.”
Truth. And I knew that look.
Archie wouldn’t rest until every last i was dotted, the case locked down tighter than Luke Bryan’s jeans. So neither would I. Jessa deserved no less than every last drop of what I would give Charity, when I got the chance.
Texas didn’t have enough hidey-holes to keep whoever had done this safe.
“We got this, Arch.” I laid a hand on his arm before I turned to the whiteboard on the long wall behind me, picked up a dry-erase marker, and scribbled two bullet points:
•Location
•Labs
“What else was in the lab report?” I tapped the cap end of the marker against my thigh. “Did they get a type for the accelerant?”
Archie nodded, fiddling with his fork. “Kerosene, with traces of paint thinner.”
Paint thinner? I added another bullet point to my list.
“Who uses paint thinner to set a fire?” I wobbled the marker between my index and middle fingers, pacing again.
“A painter? Handyman?” Archie’s eyes followed me for two lengths of the room before they went back to his fork. “Construction worker? They use it to clean equipment.”
“Why the mixture, though? Kerosene would do the job.” I spun and started back for the far end of the room. Paused. “Where did the samples you sent them come from?”
He picked up the fat folder again. “Back lower right of her skull, left middle and right index fingernails, front and back of right and left arms and thighs, genital area, left cheek.”
“Did they all test positive for paint thinner?”
Archie sat up straighter in the chair, his left hand snagging the blue folder I’d dropped off that morning. He flipped pages. Paused. “Boone is a fucking idiot, wasting your brain on running errands,” he said as he looked up with a grin. “Only the samples that came from her back had the paint thinner.”
“So it wasn’t dumped on her . . .” I raised the marker and turned back to the board.
“She’d lain on something that had been treated with it,” Archie finished.
I stepped back and surveyed my list.
•Location
•Labs
&nb
sp; •Paint thinner on surface
“No viable DNA from the genital samples?” I asked.
“Jim managed to get an inside swab, but CODIS didn’t have a match.”
Never one single goddamn easy answer.
I resumed my seat and fished a few lukewarm noodles from the paper carton, swallowing them before I pulled the photos from the remains recovery out and spread them across the table. Every possible angle of the cave’s exterior in more than a hundred shots. My eyes went first to the ground around Jessa’s body, green grass sticking up every which way, speckled with early crocus buds. “The area isn’t disturbed.”
Archie dropped his fork into his empty food carton with a sigh. “Because she was dumped there.”
“That place isn’t that secluded.”
“Right. So where was she from July to February? And why did someone want her found?”
“No. Earthly. Idea.” Every bit of the lift from figuring out the paint thinner vanished, and I stabbed a chunk of tofu with one chopstick. “Somebody was careful.”
“Somebody is smart,” Archie said, standing to throw away his carton and leaning over the photos on the table.
I went back to the earlier folders, studying the stills from the ATM camera again.
When I flipped to the third one, I caught a sharp breath.
Archie turned as I coughed up the bite I’d half inhaled, raising his eyebrows when I brandished the photo as I wiped at my watering eyes.
“I know this guy,” I sputtered, plopping the photo on the table and pointing to a man coming from the right, entering the bar behind Jessa. “I met him this afternoon.”
Archie’s eyes popped wide. “You’re kidding.”
I shook my head, my fingers going to the charm bracelet, a silent thank-you floating through my head. “He’s the girls’ track coach at Marshall High School. Tenley Andre’s coach.”
“No shit?” Archie’s face spread into a grin. “You have gone from pestering me for gum to being damned handy to have around.”
I smiled. “I could still use the gum. I haven’t had a smoke break since before noon.”
Archie flipped open his laptop and pulled a pack of Doublemint from his shirt pocket. “Good girl. Chew on this and let’s see what we can dig up on your girl’s coach.”
Holy shit. Was it possible Jessa DuGray and Tenley Andre had more in common than neighboring ZIP codes and much-too-short lives?
14
She stayed on the edge of the dam, perfect ass nearly brushing her stiletto heels, long arms hugging her knees tight, completely unaware that she wasn’t alone, until she demolished him.
Darkness seeped in from every side, blood rushing to his core, zipper straining to contain his want as he memorized every last flawless inch of her.
Underneath his soul, in the darkest place, the monster stirred. Yawned. Focused on the angel.
Oh.
Oh my.
God, yes. What the hell are you waiting for, you coward?
The monster willed his hands to the door handle. Wanted his long legs to close the space between them and the angel. Wanted to twist a hand into her impossibly moonlight-colored hair. Trail the two honored fingers over her satiny cheek. Whisper to her. Rip the gauzy blouse and find her wings.
The monster wanted inside this angel.
It craved her cries, wanted to feel her fight fade, taste her tears.
That would send this ugliest part of him that couldn’t really be part of him at all back to sleep. Maybe even satisfy it. Banish it entirely. Surely, the monster would give up on him eventually. Everyone always did.
But there had to be another way.
He was so hard it hurt. The monster roared.
Get up, you whiny little bitch! The words were so clear, so loud, inside his head. He heard them all over again. Like they were playing on the stereo. Which of course was impossible. He was alone here, the peace of this place special. Calming.
What’s the matter? She doesn’t do it for you?
He flinched, electricity racing through his core. Shook his head. The darkness spread until he couldn’t see the angel anymore. A girl lay spread before him on a scarred, messy table, her skirt ripped. Her hands tied. Her pleading eyes streaming tears.
Please no. Please help me. Her mouth made the motions but he couldn’t hear her voice over the others.
You want that? Take it. Her skin was so soft. So smooth.
The monster was born in that moment. Willed to life as the cries fell around him. He pushed, pushed, pushed until the unthinkable was done and the monster was gone.
He told himself he loathed the monster. But somewhere deeper and darker than most people dare to go inside themselves, he also knew he’d come to need it.
Because of moments like these. The monster might be howling, clawing—but he wanted her, too. And hating the monster was so much easier than hating himself.
The girl vanished, fading back into memory. His vision cleared. Still there—his very own celestial wonder, serene as a monument on top of the dam.
So damned easy.
Just creep across the road and touch her . . .
Silence the monster. Silence them all.
Right now.
The knife practically jumped from its hiding spot, his palm slick with sweat around the hilt.
Later.
Now.
Wait.
For what?
He knew there was something. Staring at her perfection with the monster growling in his thoughts made it impossible to remember.
Couldn’t be very important, then.
He gripped his forehead in one hand.
“Shut up!” The words slid through clenched teeth.
The monster growled. Showed fangs.
He raised the blade and made his call.
15
Two close-to-dead laptop batteries later, Archie and I had almost enough for a warrant. But not quite.
Turned out, Jake Simpson’s all-American apple pie image wrapped a long string of past indiscretions in sugary stars and stripes.
“Ten years ago, he was fired from Dakota High School in Ardmore, Oklahoma for sleeping with a student,” Archie read aloud from a police report. “Went by Bob Jacobs back then—his legal name is Robert Jacob Simpson, according to vital records.”
“Then how in the hell did he get hired at a school like Marshall?” I asked. “To hear my mother tell it, blue blood and an Ivy League degree are required to take phone messages there.”
I touched a few keys on my laptop, navigating to the school database. Simpson’s personnel file had to be a work of top-tier fiction, and I wanted a look. I tried the obvious passwords, starting with the mascot and working my way to password. No luck.
“Their security is better than average.” I sat back in my chair, stretching my arms over my head.
Archie stuck his fingers in his ears. “La-la-la-la, spare me your amateur hacking adventures,” he said.
“I resent the ‘amateur’ part of that statement.” I poked my tongue out at him. “I still have a forensics certification, even if I’m not currently using it.” Officially, anyway. “Without seeing the employment records, I’m going to guess he got a fake ID. It’s not like they’re hard to come by—I can find you two dozen kids on Craigslist right now who could make one that would fool us all day long.”
“How would he explain not having a social?”
“He made one up? I mean, if statutory rape doesn’t bother him, why would violating the tax code be an issue?”
Archie nodded, drumming his thick fingers on the table. “And you spoke with this guy?”
“Briefly.” I picked up a pen, rapid-fire clicking the button on one end. “I didn’t like him. Couldn’t put my finger on why at the time. He has a sort of smarmy-behind-the-handsome, car salesman-y vibe. Makes you wonder what he wants out of it when he speaks to you.”
“Charming. How did he react to the news about the girl?”
I paused the clicking
. “Oddly.” I stretched the word. “I mean, it didn’t jump out at me, because he was kind of a douche. But he seemed more concerned about what he was going to tell Stanford than the fact that she was dead. And there was something weird between him and the mom. I thought they were sleeping together, maybe . . .” I let the words trail off, my thumb picking up the rhythm with the pen button again as the room around me blurred out of focus, everything in me zeroed in on the theory taking shape in my head.
Archie stayed quiet.
“What if Tenley was sleeping with the coach?” I asked finally.
“Where’d we jump on this train, again?”
Hours ago, it seemed, but I didn’t know where it was headed at the time.
“Her friend said she was seeing someone but she wouldn’t tell him who.” The room snapped back into sharp focus as I shot to my feet. “And the lady at the gymnastics school said she was all the time whispering into her phone. Why would she be so guarded about a normal relationship? There had to be something she didn’t want anyone to find out. Something that could’ve cost her boyfriend his job?”
Archie’s brows drew down and joined as one, his head bobbing faster and faster. “He’s got a history of it.”
“And maybe the weirdness with the mom was that she knew? Or suspected?”
“So he took the girl to the dam and killed her? What for?”
I spun slowly on one heel, reaching for the photo of Simpson following Jessa DuGray into the bar. “Because of this. Suppose Simpson did know Jessa and didn’t want people to know that after she went missing, because of his past. Or he maybe actually was involved in Jessa’s death. What if Tenley found out he was connected with Jessa somehow?”
Archie slid one hand down his face, his words muffled by his fingers. “And he thought she was going to turn him in.”
“It would explain the detailed effort at making it look like she jumped—whether he meant to kill Tenley or not, even. If they were up at the dam, and she confronted him about Jessa and they argued . . .”
Archie’s head bobbed. “It’s not the craziest theory I’ve heard. What’d this guy say about Tenley today? Anything that would push the suicide story?”
Fear No Truth Page 9